Computers are vulnerable to malicious computer code such as worms, viruses and Trojan horses. As used herein, “malicious computer code” is any code that enters a computer without an authorized user's knowledge and/or without an authorized user's consent, or code that disguises its nature and enters a computer with an authorized user's naive consent. Despite the deployment of software (e.g., anti-virus software) to protect computers from malicious code, computers still sometimes become infected with malicious code. Companies and individuals spend a lot of time and effort identifying and cleaning-up malicious code that has infected their computers.
Some companies that provide anti-virus software provide clean-up scripts that can identify and clean-up known malicious code (e.g., a known computer virus). New malicious code is frequently created and released. Therefore, new clean-up scripts have to be developed and distributed to identify and clean-up the new malicious code. Such scripts can be made available on web sites. Users can download these scripts, and run them in order to clean-up malicious computer code from their computers.
The procedures for downloading and running these scripts require active participation from the user. The user must know where current clean-up scripts are available, and which script(s) to download and run. The user must also know how to download and run the scripts. Running clean-up scripts often requires rebooting the computer, sometimes multiple times. Many contemporary computer users have minimal computer skills, and have difficulty successfully executing these procedures. Even where a user is capable of successfully running clean-up scripts, the user may find the procedure to be overly time consuming.
Additionally, where an infected computer has become unusable, a user must reboot their computer from an uninfected CD-ROM or floppy disk in order to subsequently download and run the required clean-up scripts. This procedure requires additional user participation and knowledge, making it difficult or impracticable for some users with minimal computer skills.